January 28, 2010

• At the university I am attending, pregnancy tests are available for free at the student health center.  As I was walking up to the counter, a frustrated looking girl with a beautiful face (aside from it being scrunched into an awkward frown) and an hourglass figure in normal sorority girl garb pushed past me while stuffing a medium sized brown paper bag stapled shut into her gigantic expensive purse.  I sighed and thought to myself, “She looks rape-able,” because that’s what I always think about sorority girls in those skin tight leggings with their underwear lines along their apple shaped asses clearly visible as they walk away from you.  I arrived at the counter and cheerfully expressed interest in a free pregnancy test.  The woman gave me an eyebrow raise and then smiled in a nervous way and handed me…a medium sized brown paper bag stapled shut.  I turned it over in my hands for a moment and then asked her how many I could get in a year.  Again, the woman smiled nervously and responded that I could only get them twice a semester and that perhaps I should think about alternative methods of birth control if I planned on needing to know so often.  At this moment I looked her straight in the eye and said that I was trying to get pregnant and that she probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions about people so easily.

  With that I walked away, but as I thought about the situation, the girl walking away from the counter, the woman behind the counter, the bag to conceal the pregnancy test, all of it was so negative and depressing.  Something I jokingly say to myself could have easily been true.  That girl could have gone to a party, gotten super drunk and then been raped by a douchey piece of shit just because he could.  Or her boyfriend could have asked for sex and told her something stupid like, “You can’t get pregnant if I pull out,” and now she had missed a period.  Or she could have been behaving almost responsibly, using a condom which broke or perhaps missing a couple birth control pills and just worrying about the situation.  Regardless, it was all negative.  And the rude woman behind the counter certainly didn’t help any.  Her insincere smile and thoughtless comments were pretty uncalled for.  And the bag, the pathetic attempt at disguising the little object, really only served as a reminder that she, this random girl who’s life could be in so many places, should be embarrassed and regretful about her current situation.  It made me angrier and angrier as I thought about it more.  Why should someone be persecuted more than they have already persecuted themselves for whatever mistakes, controllable or uncontrollable, that they had made?  But, I couldn’t really think of anything I could do about it…  I was so frustrated because something that should have been exciting and greeted with a joyful, smiling desk attendant asking me what I was thinking of naming the child and if I wanted a boy or girl and blah blah blah had instead been turned into something depressing.  It just sucked the joy out of me.  I still don’t really know what I would suggest to improve the situation.  There is such a stigma for a girl younger than 30 to be seeking or purchasing a pregnancy test that one person’s frustration with it probably doesn’t matter all that much.  *sigh*
  ————————————————————
  Dear women over the age of 35 on craigslist:

  I understand that you are all worried about your safety and you live alone and blah blah blah, but when I don’t respond to your stupid e-mail asking me to put my credit card information into some weird ass verification website, this does NOT indicate that I am a weird stalker who wants to kill you and eat any children you might have while having sex with your corpse.  Please don’t flag my entry because I deleted your e-mail instead of responding to it and therefore must not be willing to verify my identity because I lied about it, and don’t tell me that you flagged it because I would really rather you just did it and I didn’t know why instead of being given a really dumb reason that angers me.

  Look, I’m a 23-year-old girl.  You could just as easily be a 45-year-old serial killer or some kind of phishing bot (because all the responses I ever get from late 30′s women have the exact same basic formula) hoping that I will give you my information through whatever website you send me so that you can steal my identity or something, not that you would get much money.  I mean, every response is something like:

  Hi
  
  I was browsing cg and saw your ad.  I am a [insert descriptive words matching ad request] 3X-year-old woman.  I like [some stuff] and [some other stuff].  I am looking for [a deep connection/just some fun/a serious relationship/whatever] and thought I would reply.
  
  I live alone and for my safety I want you to verify your identity.  Enter your credit card information and you can see my phone number.  Here is the website:
  
  [insert link made up of random letters]
  
  Hope to hear from you soon!
  [generic woman name]

  To say that I could be a stalker or a spammer or something is basically the pot calling the kettle black!  Everyone on the internet could be one of those things!  So don’t flag my ad just because I don’t respond to you!  Sheesh!  Weirdos!

  Sincerely,
  Katie

  • 3:23 pm
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